Reasons He Hasn’t Called

He’s been hit by a bus. He awoke this morning, resolved to break the 3-day rule not by calling, but by sending a small bouquet of seasonal fresh flowers. After searching online for the florist who delivered whimsical arrangements of daisies and pink tulips to a wedding he attended six months ago, he set off for the shop. Struggling to change the navigation options on his phone from “drive” to “bicycle,” he became distracted and slipped into the path of an oncoming bus. He will be fine in 2-4 weeks, but the phone is beyond repair.

He can’t find his phone. After sending a brief but thoughtful, “heyy, get home safe?” text, your dinner companion nodded off without replacing his phone on the nightstand where it normally resides. A creature of habit, he did not notice its absence from the usual lineup of wallet, watch, and lighter next to the bed. It has now run out of batteries, and lies forgotten next to a pile of cat vomit under the bed while he searches frantically and without success through his Jeep and office.

He has a girlfriend. While you re-watch season one of Revenge, alone, wearing nothing but tube socks and the ratty tee shirt that isn’t even from an ex-boyfriend but from your kid sister’s ex-boyfriend, left it under your couch after her last visit, he is eating salmon overcooked by the girlfriend at their Ikea kitchen table. He had thought of ending the relationship, but decided the mild disinterest he feels for her isn’t worth the emotional or financial destruction that moving out of their shared apartment will cause. Four years from now, he and the girlfriend will be negotiating a cheerless, though amicable, divorce while you snorkel in the Maldives with a multi-cultural selection of your college girlfriends.

Upon meeting for drinks, he opened your first date with a “neg.” You told him to fuck off. Thankful that the tools of Pick Up Artists are so easy to detect, you stayed resolute to your promise to never date a man who uses abbreviations like “k-close” or “kino.” High from leaving a twenty on the bar and storming out with the fortitude of a teen movie heroine, you spend the rest of the evening sexting your old roommate and drinking moderately priced chardonnay.

Frankly, it is your face. The symmetry of your features reminds him of a failed career as a plastic surgeon. He cannot think of kissing you without remembering the heartache of pulling a C in Immunology junior year, the resulting decline in effort and confidence that led to three more years of mediocre grades and a disappointing residency. Terrified of actually making someone look worse, he abandoned cosmetic surgery and accepted his brother-in-law’s offer of an in at his insurance firm.

While he thought you were perfectly charming and generally enjoys women of your shape and size, he is an aesthete who finds your opposing taste in music and lit theory insurmountable. Even as he walked you home, he could barely conceal his amusement that anyone could still find emotional depth in Broken Social Scene. If you could read the scathing remarks he plans to jot down in a bespoke leather journal, you would abandon all hope of a phone call and look forward to your future seduction by a hirsute but sensitive national firefighter.